Several Alabama judges refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples despite Supreme Court ruling. Meanwhile, a grandfather is assaulted by police in Madison County.
Author: Amy Davidson
Editor: Colleen Kelly
For 26 counties in Alabama, this has been the week without marriage licenses — not for same-sex couples or couples of different sexes. On Monday, the Supreme Court denied the state attorney general’s request for a stay of Judge Callie V. S. Granade’s ruling that the state’s anti-marriage laws were unconstitutional.
Some probate judges continued to be intimidated by Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court, who told the judges that it would be illegal for them to let same-sex couples marry. Granade had to remind probate judges that their job was to heed the ruling of the Supreme Court.
The threat came from the same Roy Moore who had already been removed from the bench once because he posed as the “last defender of the Ten Commandments.” It is not clear if the probate judges were afraid or if they saw his actions as a good excuse to ignore Granade’s decision.
The A.C.L.U. brought a suit against Probate Judge Don Davis of Mobile County, who was turning all couples away — there were judges in 18 counties who only ignored same-sex couples. Davis’s lawyer offered a metaphor in which the judge was a soldier in Vietnam caught between a landmine and a sniper, according to the Times.
The argument didn’t work with Judge Granade — she ordered Davis, and all of Alabama’s probate judges, to issue licenses to same-sex couples. “The Plaintiffs report that they all feel demeaned and humiliated by Alabama’s refusal to treat them equally,” she wrote in her decision.
One man seeking a license, James Strawser, had “serious health issues,” and had named his partner, John Humphrey, as his medical proxy. “But the hospital refused to honor that document because under Alabama law Humphrey was not a spouse or family member,” Granade wrote. They had brought a pastor with them to Davis’s office, where they were turned away.
Strawser and Humphrey were married early on Thursday evening, right after the courthouse opened.
Bill Armistead, the Alabama Republican Party chairman, published a column on the state party’s website arguing that while the Supreme Court Justices had denied a stay, Justices Thomas and Scalia had dissented.
When searching for something hateful, a better place to look in Alabama is at a street in Madison County. Sureshbhai Patel, who had come from India a week earlier to help care for his 17-month-old grandson, was slammed to the ground so hard by police officers that he sustained spinal injuries — just because they thought he might not belong where they saw him.
Patel had just gone for a walk near his son’s house — now he is in the hospital, and has yet to regain full mobility. The video above raises the possibility that the way the police pulled him to his feet and tried to force him to walk might have aggravated the initial injuries. One of the officers has been dismissed and charged with assault.
The news about marriage and the attack are connected by more than the Alabama dateline. Patel came from Gujarat because his son, Chirag Patel, had married, become an American citizen, and made a life here.
When it comes to marriage, there has been unkindness in Alabama, and already long engagements have been extended. But what is interesting is how those scenes are neither universal in the state nor typical in the rest of the country. In almost every other place, marriage has brought no real noise other than that of the couples’ celebrations.
the dystopian garden 